Imagine opening up your email and instead of just the standard Groupons, spammers, and loads of subjects starting with “Re:” (even though you were sick of reading the original email the first time around), you – Joe Shmoe – see page after page of:
[Joe Shmoe] everybody likes you…
[Joe Shmoe] everybody wants to follow you…
[Joe Shmoe] everybody is commenting about you you YOU…
This exact thing happened to me last Friday. Well, the exact same thing except that instead of “Joe Shmoe” it was for my blog very VERY busy mom. And of course it didn’t actually say “everybody.” I just said that to provide myself a little ego boost.
But I kid you not. I was getting a new email practically every minute.
Apparently a post I wrote last month about obsessing over the high price of gas entitled “($ ÷ Gallon) x (Miles ÷ Gallon) = LA Gasoline Anxiety” was featured on WordPress.com’s Freshly Pressed, a Webpage that offers between 11 and 19 picks of the day chosen from their nearly half a million bloggers.
Typically I’ll get 80 to 160 hits when I post a new blog, and then it’ll dwindle down to about 20 to 50 hits until I post another new one the next week.
But after appearing on Freshly Pressed’s hit list, I had an astounding 1757 hits!
Let me repeat that: 1757 hits!
I don’t even know 1757 people. Even virtual people.
More readers visited in subsequent days. 1647 on Saturday. 1438 on Sunday. 1443 on Monday. By Tuesday it dropped down to just 442, which was still more than double my all-time record of 174 hits in one day.
I received 181 comments on that article alone, mostly from people reprimanding me for driving my pokey 5-year old son 1300 feet to school in the morning. I guess you can’t explain the humiliation of a tardy slip to people who want to save the planet from greenhouse gases.
I must have logged onto my blog a hundred times between Friday and Monday just to watch my hits graph move up. And to answer the obvious question… no, it wasn’t just me visiting my own site 1757, 1647, 1438, and 1443 times in four days. WordPress actually counts unique visitor per day. And if I am anything, I am certainly unique.
So, to celebrate my good fortune, I now present:
10 Exciting Things I Can Now Do After Being Featured on Freshly Pressed
1. I can wear a sash in the Valley Village 4th of July Parade that says “Miss Freshly Pressed.” Or maybe not, since I hate ironing.
2. I’ll have virtual conversations with well-known bloggers, and they still won’t know or care who the heck I am, but I have the opportunity to feel smug anyway.
3. I’m finally getting more regular comments from people besides my mom and my husband.
4. I get to experience what it’s like to have 5 minutes of fame without claiming to be impregnated by a pop star.
5. Because I now have more Twitter followers, I’d better start posting more newsworthy tweets than “Another Wednesday. Another Humpday.”
6. I now have readers in countries I not only have never heard of, I also can’t pronounce their names. (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya… anyone?)
7. My Klout score has risen to an impressive 46! I still don’t really know what a Klout score is, or if 46 really is impressive, but it sounds good, and most of my readers probably don’t know the difference.
8. I can brag that both Indians (Native Americans) and Indians (from Asia) read my blog, except at opposite times of the day.
9. I now know a lot of people in Europe who want to move to LA for the cheap gas.
10. I have to figure out who at Freshly Pressed I need to bribe to get featured again. This has been fun!
very VERY busy mom 
Makes blogging sound like a full-time gig… Congrats!
I love blogging. I just wish I had more time to do it. Thanks for the congrats, Wandering Voiceless!
I love your outlook even after your fame, you’re still so grounded and fun! Doubly glad now that you were FP’d because you are FUN!
Thanks, Sarah! The fame was fleeting but a kick while it lasted.
Whoa, 1757! Good for you. Spread the word when and if you find that FP guy. I’m sure we’d all like to know this person.
Can you imagine if the Freshly Pressed guy or gal really took bribes? He/She would be living in quite the lap of luxury!
Business must be boomin’.
So glad to have found you on Freshly Pressed – you are hilarious! Thanks for your posts.
My favorite is:
3. I’m finally getting more regular comments from people besides my mom and my husband.
Love it!!
Thanks Melanie! Although so far neither one of them have commented on this post. Maybe I scared them off.
Freshly pressed is how I discovered your blog. I think it must be so exciting, I’d probably take a bunch of screen shots and post them as well. I’d be like, “Look at me win. This makes my ego feel sooooo good.” and stuff like that.
Lame comment I know, but I’ve only had two coffees this morning…
My husband thinks I got shingles from too much coffee. I thought it was lack of sleep and the only thing that kept me going was the coffee. Your comment wasn’t lame at all, by the way. I had several more screen shots that I didn’t use. One was of all the different countries that read my blog. The screen shot would have been longer than the blog. Pretty cool, huh?
That is so awesome! I would have broken my face from smiling too hard at all that news. As it is, I did a happy dance when coffeepoweredmom got it’s first follower. I had a previous blog that wasn’t mommy-related, but my real passion is my children so I am much more invested in this one. Congratulations on being Pressed, and I will continue to follow your adventures!
haha! This is so true even though I’ve never been freshly pressed as a newbie. You definitely deserve the smug, so enjoy it. And wish you next featured post comes sooner! Keep up the good work:)!
Thanks, xuantian! I love your photo!
How long to you have to keep blogging before you’re not a newbie? I honestly don’t have a clue.
Thanks! I’ve been blogging since February!
Reblogged this on The Path to Chinese Characters and commented:
Hey guys.. still not class time. I’ve become to love blogging even more these days. Every blogger seeks to be featured or Freshly Pressed. I’ve never been featured as a newbie. But I guess it’s quite normal and should be to be happy and even smug when one gets FP. Here’s a post from A Very Busy Mom. She is so sweet to share with us how her feeling and how her blogging life has become after being FP. Hope you enjoy her post and happy blogging! 🙂
How exciting to be reblogged! Thank you! I just signed up for The Path to Chinese Characters. It is an absolutely beautiful webpage. It was so strange to see your audio clips. I’m a dialogue editor and I work with these all day. I’ve never actually seen one on a blog before. I see a waveform and I automatically want to start cutting out lip smacks and denture clicks. Fortunately, you didn’t have these issues with your audio.
Thanks for your kind words. Wow..My first time knowing a dialogue editor.That is so cool! What does dialogue editor usually do? What do you mean by the “lip smacks” and the “denture clicks”?? 🙂
I take the production sound and smooth out the edits so it seems seamless. It takes about 50 hours or more to cut a one hour show, which is really about 43 minutes if you take out commercials, main title and end credits. If there’s a bump on a line I fine an alternate take and manipulate the line so it fits where the old line was. I take out floor creaks, stomach growls, clunks, etc. “One Upon a Time” is shot in Vancouver where it rains a lot, so the exterior scenes are often shot with a tarp over their heads. I physically have to go in and remove every single raindrop and replace syllables that have a drop. Quite tedious, but it’s a perfect job for someone who is anal like me.
So what was the post that held your record hits before you were FPd?
Of all things, it was the one about my first year on Neighborhood Council Valley Village: http://wp.me/p1Mnzy-aA. Possibly my least funny blog. I also apparently didn’t make it abundantly clear that it was a team effort & felt really bad about making it sound like it was a re-election speech. Personally, I prefer to write funny blogs, even if I don’t get as many readers.
great post! I have recently been fortunate enough for this! Wow, so much fun and work 🙂 Congrats and this is very cool post indeed
Congrats on your Freshly Pressed as well! It’s a rush, isn’t it?
like Crack and Chocolate in a Sex Package
You should turn that into a bumper sticker. You’d make a mint.
but then I would be a bumper sticker author and have to love with myself 🙂
Congratualations. It certainly rocked my world when my blog was Freshly Pressed.!! Nice to know the feeling is universal!!
Wouldn’t the world be a mighty happy place if everyone got to be Freshly Pressed at some point before they die?
Congratulations!
Thank you!
You are so adorable and hysterical! I enjoyed your post very much!!!! Loved all the pics and graphs!
Thanks. The graph really blew me away. For months the top line was 100, then 150. It’s so weird to see it at 2,000.
I’m definitely more at 100-200 per day usually so that would completely blow my mind, too!! 🙂
As the verybusyhusband, I am proud that you were featured on Freshly Pressed. It is nice to se a sizable response. Now you need to write a blog ” 10 things I like about my husband.” I know am good for at least five things. I cleaned the car and picked up dog poop yesterday. That’s seven. I went grocery shopping. That’s eight. Maybe it should be “The Eight Things I like about my Husband.” I would think writing a blog on “The Ten Things that my husband does that drive me crazy” would be good. I know I could fill that list. Maybe weeding the list down to ten might be a challenge.
I’m actually saving photos for that very blog. One is of all the hangers you leave on the bathroom rod. I think if there are any men reading my blog, they won’t care, but it would drive the women crazy.
I have just had such a fun read here on your wonderful site. First off, your husband’s comments are hilarious. You two must have a great time together. But I’m really writing this to let you know something that may fill in one of your gaps about being Freshly Pressed (as I was April 9 on my Global Art Junkie blog).
It’s about “finding that FP guy” you mention. There is one. Really. Only it’s a woman and she’s the “Story Wrangler,” isn’t that a great description? So WordPress. I know this because I sent an email of excited thanks into the WP Hugs ether hoping someone deserving would catch it, and she wrote me back. She’s very nice. (And I doubt she can be bribed!!)
Love love love your blog.
Thanks for telling me. I’m actually very happy that she can’t be bribed. I still don’t quite know the criteria though. Most posts are pretty good but some are real stinkers.
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nothing like high gas prices to get people in a frenzy. fyi I just reblogged your original post on our blog http://www.Cost2go.com (my first time reblogging..lets see how this goes)
Hi! Congrats on being freshly pressed! I too have been featured (had no ideaaa what it was until I looked it up!) I was just wondering how long you get featured for? I though it was for a day, but it’s been over 24 hours, and I can’t seem to find it anywhere online. Thanks in advance!